Facing features: writing feature stories in the sports world

While many love to read a story about the final score from a championship game or perhaps even a post-season review for a national-qualifying team, there is yet another type of story that can appeal to both sports fans and overall human interest. This type of writing is called the Feature Story. When readers need a break from the games and the numbers, they can turn to feature stories to hear more about a specific athlete to learn more about them beyond the scope of the stat sheet.

"Viking Spotlight: Sal Avila"

(Source: VCSUVikings / Hannah Anderson)

In the past, I have published multiple athlete features for the VCSU Information Department. The purpose of these features was the encourage friends, family, and the community to learn more about VCSU athletes beyond their respective sports. These features were titled "Viking Spotlights" to VCSUvikings.com and its social media platforms. In October 2020, I created a story focused on dual-sport athlete Sal Avila. You can view this story with the embedded image next to this paragraph. ^

Something that rings well through Professor Vareberg’s lecture is the concept that feature stories allow for creative liberty. In the case of this feature, I used the AdobeSpark website to create my story – which meant I needed to craft my story to be visually appealing and readable on the page. I had to adapt my writing to the proper medium. While this may not be print specifically, the page itself could be printed to appear to be - thus, I would consider it to fall under these qualifications.

This story covers a few of the basic concepts as reviewed in this week's lecture. Let us look at some of those concepts:

• Emphasis

  • This story emphasizes Avila both within and outside of athletic field.

• Identify the problem

  • The article discusses Avila's struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside juggling life as a dual-sport athlete.

• Give the scope

  • The story explains the focus on VCSU and one of it's athletes. It also mentions where Avila comes from and wraps that into the story for relevancy across the board.

• Reasons

  • To introduce the post, we always explain that the Viking Spotlight is meant to shine light on athletes and their lives combined with their VCSU experience in order to teach others more about VCSU culture.

• Impact

  • The article discusses the impact that student-athlete has made both on and off the field - both in school and society.

• Moves and countermoves; Quote usage

  • Avila and a teammate both offer quotes to explain how the athletes will continue to serve their team and community - which should be encouraging to readers.

• Future

  • The article looks ahead to see where the student-athlete will be going and explains how VCSU has affected that growth, gathering quotes from the featured athlete about their future plans and goals in relation to what has been discussed so far in the article.

The question you may have is:

" How can I learn from this?"

Well, let me tell you. By understanding the need for emphasis, problem identification, impact, and the other items previously listed – you can easily piece together how you create your own feature work. The best part about these type of stories is that you can put your own, personal style on the work – without adding your opinion. Professor Vareberg suggests that tip, too.

Having the creative freedom to write features allows for fun and flexibility within the work, so I advise you to also try out these tips and see what you can do!

If you want to stretch your mind and think about what makes a good feature story or even WHO – ask yourself this:

If you could write a feature story on one famous athlete, who would you write about and why?

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References

Vareberg, Kyle. [Kyle Vareberg]. (2021, Mar.) Week 12 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt_y6JogiAc